The book wins comfortably: 69 % believe a book beats its film adaptation, against 15 % who disagree and 15 % with no opinion.
Men and women vote the same way, women a little more decisively still. Neither group produces a substantial minority camp: disagreement is marginal everywhere.
By age, agreement is near total among the 18-24s, the 45-54s and the over-65s. Only the 55-64 bracket flips entirely to the other side, the day's single pocket of resistance.
The debate converges, but its most endorsed argument is also its most constructed: adaptation answers to commercial constraints, meaning you simplify the story, make characters instantly legible, fit into two hours and appeal to the widest audience. Hence the line that landed: a book belongs more to whoever reads it, a film to whoever produces it.
Another voice takes the same idea to practical ground: a ninety-minute or two-hour film sacrifices whatever seems secondary, where the novel develops characters and detail.
The most nuanced contribution nonetheless comes from the majority camp. It concedes that some elements of a book cannot be carried to the screen, and vice versa, and that what is left to a reader's imagination gains a sharper frame in cinema. Its preference for books rests precisely on the imaginative work demanded of the reader: what is being judged is not the quality of the adaptation but the freedom left to the audience.